Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 has Atom Z2560 inside

Samsung has its own Exynos chips, Qualcomm and Nvidia both have decent tablet chips and Media Tek is growing stronger every day and it was not easy to anticipate Intel Atom Z2560 in the latest Galaxy Tab 3 from Samsung. The first rumours emerged weeks ago and were confirmed last week, but now the tablet is official.

The Galaxy Tab 2 was not the greatest creation as it was powered by a quite obsolete TI OMAP 4430 1GHz dual core chip and Atom Z2560 sounds like a nice refresh compared to a last year’s offering. Samsung officially said it is using a dual-core processor, but this morning Intel sent out a PR confirming that the chip inside Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is indeed Intel's Atom Z2560. The chip works at 1.6GHz, has two cores and runs Android 4.2.

Atom Z2560 is a dual core 1.6GHz clocked 32nm chip and it supports four hyperthreads. It has been shipping as of Q2 2013. Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 will also come equipped with Intel’s XMM 6262 3G modem solution or Intel’s XMM 7160 4G LTE solution. Of course this 3G/4G version will end up more expensive than the WiFi but at this time Samsung is not telling us any pricing.

Smaller versions of the Galaxy Tab 3 that come in 8 and 7 inches are both powered by Samsung's own chips and all three Galaxy Tab 3 devices are expected to start shipping later this month.

With the right price the Galaxy Tab 3 might be an interesting device but traditionally Samsung had a thing for overpricing a mediocre hardware and pushing it to the market with tons of marketing cash. This is especially true of its tablets and the Galaxy 3 features a 1280x800 screen, which already sounds out of date.